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Through collaborative leadership we supplied a pipeline of $812 million in new capital investment projects to strengthen and diversify the assets in Iowa. But beyond big number private-sector prospects we also work with the progressive small businesses, nonprofits, civic leaders, workforce, education institutions, utilities, transportation, housing, etc to maximize productivity and long-term prosperity in our evolving economic landscape.

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You are here:Home»Tama County’s Fibonacci Project: Help map the local events that shaped Tama County’s economy over the past decade

Tama County’s Fibonacci Project: Help map the local events that shaped Tama County’s economy over the past decade

Let’s play a thought experiment from 1202: Consider the growth of an idealized rabbit population, assuming that a newly-born pair of rabbits, one male, one female, are put in a field; rabbits are able to mate at the age of one month so that at the end of its second month a female can produce another pair of rabbits; rabbits never die and a mating pair always produces one new pair (one male, one female) every month from the second month on. The puzzle that Fibonacci posed was: how many pairs will there be in one year?

This is the same math principle that we work on in economic development every day. Only our “pair of rabbits” would be the action of breeding the “healthiest possible intelligence, leadership, resources and innovation” to breed more “healthy intelligence, leadership, resources and innovation”. We thus work to maximize the chances that healthy growth triggers more growth at an accelerated rate.

So when a group of Tama County leaders started the Tama County Economic Development Commission in 2000 the goal was to increase the chances of more “new rabbits” and decrease cannibalization, predators, sickness, mutations, natural disasters stumping the multiplication potential of rabbits. Now, 10 years later, we want to map how Tama County leaders have proactively shaped the economic landscape instead of merely being at the mercy of external circumstances.